House GOP adopts Trump budget after topsy-turvy night

House Republicans adopted the budget resolution that will lay the foundation for enacting President Trump's legislative agenda Tuesday night, just minutes after they initially pulled the measure from the floor.

The legislation — which provides a framework for Republican priorities on tax, border, and energy in “one big beautiful bill” — was approved in a 217-215 vote. It now heads to the Senate.

It capped a wild evening in the House chamber that saw Republican leaders hold open an unrelated vote for more than an hour to buy time to win over holdouts, announce they were canceling a vote on the legislation, and then reverse course just 10 minutes later.

The tally also marked a dramatic turnaround for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House GOP leaders, who hours earlier were facing opposition to the measure from deficit hawks, skepticism among some other hardliners, and apprehension from moderates concerned about potential slashes to social safety net measures.

In the end, leadership flipped three conservative lawmakers who previously said they would vote against the resolution — Reps. Victoria Spartz (Ind.), Warren Davidson (Ohio) and Tim Burchett (Tenn.) — accumulating enough support to get the measure over the finish line. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) remained as the lone GOP "no" vote.

“We got it done, we had the requisite number of votes to move this process along, and now passing the budget resolution in the House, it will go to the Senate,” Johnson told reporters. “This is the first important step in opening up the reconciliation process. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the America First agenda. We’re gonna deliver all of it, not just parts of it, and this was the first step in that process.”

While the successful vote is a win for Johnson and his leadership team, a series of landmines loom. The House must reconcile with the Senate — which passed a budget resolution last week that utilizes a different strategy — craft the Trump agenda bill in line with the parameters in the legislation, and get the final measure across the finish line in the conference’s razor-thin majority.

Adoption of the resolution Tuesday night made for a stunning scene on the House floor. 

Leading into the vote, Massie, Spartz, Davidson and Burchett had said they planned to oppose the measure, enough opposition to sink the bill. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) dubbed himself a “lean no.” They were largely concerned with the level of spending cuts in the legislation, speaking out against the impact it would have on the deficit.

But after more than an hour of lobbying on the House floor and leadership’s decision to cancel — then reschedule — the vote, Spartz, Burchett and Davidson flopped to yes, giving the conference just enough support to adopt the legislation.

Trump, who has advocated for the House’s one-bill approach over the Senate’s two-track framework, provided an 11th-hour boost, working the holdouts on the phone ahead of the vote.

“He was a big help, as always,” Johnson said after the vote when asked by The Hill how instrumental Trump’s involvement was.

Burchett was spotted on the phone with the president as he walked into the House chamber for a procedural vote on Tuesday afternoon.

“He was very — very kind, and he listened to my concerns. And my concerns are spending,” Burchett told reporters after the vote. “And he agreed … He's committed to me that he is going to go after the spending and — and a lot of these big departments.”

Spartz, meanwhile, wrote on X that she voted for the resolution after a “personal commitment” from Trump “to save healthcare and make it better for physical and fiscal health for all Americans.” It is unclear what programs she was referring to.

On the other end of the ideological spectrum, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) said he spoke to Trump multiple times over the last two days, airing his concerns about potential cuts to Medicaid. Van Drew said that Trump “is concerned with Medicaid as well and does not want to hurt it, period.”

House Democrats made a major effort to try to tank the legislation and give Republicans as little wiggle room as possible, bringing in members who had been absent for extended periods. 

That included Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.), who gave birth a month ago, and delivered a speech against the bill while holding her infant. House Majority Whip Katherine Clark told reporters that Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) — who said he was in the hospital for a week after three surgeries, a blood clot and infection — traveled back to Washington for the vote with an IV on the plane.

Despite those efforts, Republicans had exactly as many defections as they could afford in the historically slim majority: One. But even GOP leaders were uncertain about the vote as they marched forward with their plans.

“With any big vote, this is what happens on the day of the vote,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters earlier on Tuesday. “You're talking to members all the way up until when the machine closes.”

In a sign of the uncertainty of the vote outcome, even Trump stopped short of publicly backing the resolution on Tuesday, despite previously endorsing the chamber's strategy.

“The House has a bill and the Senate has a bill, and I'm looking at them both, and I'll make decisions. But I don't know where they are in the vote,” Trump said in response to a question from The Hill on Tuesday. “I know the Senate’s doing very well, and the House is doing very well, but each one of them has things that I like, so we'll see if we can come together.”

Republicans are looking to use a process known as budget reconciliation to enact Trump’s priorities, which would allow the party to circumvent Democratic opposition in the Senate.

The House’s resolution lays out a $1.5 trillion floor for spending cuts across committees with a target of $2 trillion, puts a $4.5 trillion ceiling on the deficit impact of any GOP plan to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, and includes $300 billion in additional spending for the border and defense and a $4 trillion debt limit increase.

In addition to the fiscal conservative holdouts, GOP leaders also had to win over moderates concerned about potential cuts to Medicaid in the ultimate Trump agenda bill. The resolution directs the Energy and Commerce Committee — which has jurisdiction over Medicaid — to find at least $880 billion in cuts, a figure that some lawmakers said could not be reached without significant slashes to the social safety net program.

That notion sparked worries among centrists. But after several conversations with leadership, they softened their stances.

“I’m in a better place [than] where I was yesterday,” Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), who represents a purple district, said Tuesday morning.

Leadership, for its part, has rejected the notion that the bill will prompt significant Medicaid cuts. Johnson for weeks has said the conference just wants to root out “fraud, waste and abuse” in the program. Top lawmakers amped up that messaging on Tuesday.

“Do a word search for yourself,” Johnson said Tuesday morning. “It doesn't even mention Medicaid in the bill, so that's an important point.”

Skepticism, however, remains high that the conference will be able to achieve those levels without significant changes to the social safety net program, signaling the headwinds House GOP leaders will face as they work to craft the bill in the coming weeks and months.

Updated at 9:45 p.m.

Alex Gangitano contributed.